This is the Plant Radio. It's a device that makes it possible for
a human to listen into a plant. With the radio we want to see
how interaction design might help reconfigure the relationship between humans and plants.
The purpose is to explore how we can integrate post-human theories and ideas in design practices.
The Plant Radio is part of the Growing Co-design research project.
Ultimately that project is concerned with how interaction design might engage
with complex climate change discussions by sensitizing humans to a post-human mindset;
specifically through using digital technology to engage with plants.
Later in this video we will return to what it means to have a post-human mindset.
Most people will have experienced that plants are living matter:
They move based on the sun's position, they crawl along surfaces, or they forage water.
This isn't just a primitive biological response. Several recent findings suggest
that plants are sentient beings that have an ability to process information.
This means that they can learn, remember, and apply knowledge.
Plants are also social beings that share information and nutrients with their
neighboring plants either using underground networks or airborne chemical particles.
With this they help protect and nourish their kin.
Some of these behaviors and activities are expressed through changes in electrical signals
and we can measure those with EMG sensors.
This helps us reconceptualize plants from a passive being into a living sentient being.
With this, we ultimately seek to spark an awareness of how human
nature relations are entangled and interdependent.
This reflects our co-survival on a damaged planet
The Plant Radio taps into the electro-physiological signals of a plant
and outputs these signals in three ways: a running graph, a pulsating light, and sounds.
In this way it functions like an old-fashioned broadcast radio
that extracts sound waves from the air, processes them, and outputs them as sound.
Radios like this one have been a big part of our inspiration.
We're also inspired by how ExG sensors are able to monitor internal organs
in a human body by measuring difference in voltage.
EMG sensors can also be used to measure electrical signals in plants
and in the Plant Radio, we translate these signals to sound and light.
Like on the radio receiver or a biological monitor
this allows the user to interpret what they cannot normally see.
Here it is internal signals of the plant.
Here we have a scenario of a day in the life of the Plant Radio.
At 10 PM, the atmosphere in the living room is buzzing with life.
On the couch two humans are conversing, and on the table a plant is trying to participate in
the conversation: Its sounds fill the room through the Plant Radio.
The human has gone to sleep but is kept awake by the sounds and lights from the Plant Radio
because this plant happens to be nocturnal.
In the morning, the human strokes the plant's leaves and the plant reacts briefly.
The plant radio seems to be out of battery.
While the Plant Radio's battery is charging, the radio is disconnected from the plant.
The Plant Radio is now fully charged and the human has decided
to move the plant to a different room to reduce the disturbance of the plant.
The plant is now connected to the Plant Radio again.
As the human leaves, the plant radio is filled with sounds and lights from the plant.
We have based this design on two theoretical mindsets:
Post-humanist thinking and post-phenomenology.
Posthuman thinking is concerned with leveling the hierarchy
between humans and non-humans, in this case plants.
Post-phenomenology is concerned with mediation
and how humans make sense of the world through technology.
Strictly speaking,
postphenomenology and posthumanism are not very compatible from a theoretical standpoint
but we think of the plant radio as a design that uses the postphenomenological concept "mediation"
to make posthuman matters tangible and sensible to a human being.
We will explain this in a bit more detail because it allows us to explain why this
particular design can be understood as a way to make posthuman theory tangible in design practice.
Posthumanism is an umbrella term for contemporary theories that reject dualisms;
especially the dualisms of mind-body and culture-nature.
Many disciplines currently discuss posthumanist thinking and this includes the field of design.
Still it is a challenge to apply these quite abstract theories in actual design practice,
also because it is a fundamental break with the anthropocentrism of much western thinking.
One way of working with posthumanist ontology is to de-center humans
and instead take the experiences, perspectives, and agencies of non-humans seriously.
This means understanding the ways that everything is situated embodied and non-homogenous.
To do this, we chose a design approach that centers the plants with respect to their traits,
uniquenesses, and otherness from humans.
Both during the design process and through the designed object itself.
Centering the plant means looking for ways that
humans can get access to aspects that we cannot sense of our own.
This is where the theories of post-phenomenology come in,
specifically the idea of technological mediation.
The idea is, that all technologies create and form relations between humans and the world.
One of these mediations is found in the translation work done by
for instance instrument panels as we see here.
We see this when the plant radio reads,
records, and interprets the signals into data that humans are able to sense.
The radio makes the signals cognitively accessible to humans.
Another type of mediation is that the radio shows that plants are "quasi-others"
—that is, technology helps us see that plants are actual living beings.
People living with the plant radios have for instance reported how one plant is nocturnal.
And another plant always responds when someone passes by.
These examples allow us to conceptualize plants as a kind of co-inhabitants or roomies.
As designers, how do our design choices make us better balance the relationship between all
types of species —including decentering the human in designs that are made for humans?
In our design, one detailed example of such
choices is the decision to NOT include a power button.
Not having a power button on a device is an unusual usability choice.
We might even say that we humans take our ability to turn off a device for granted.
But from a post-humanist perspective it makes sense:
If we use post-humanist thinking to try to understand this world from the perspective of
the plant (and not the human) we get a conceptual framing for not making it possible to turn it off.
We see the plant as a non-human actor as important as the human person who operates the radio.
This is a small detail but to us it was an important detail.
From a post-humanist perspective, the omission of the power button
allows the plant to express itself unhindered via the Plant Radio.
You can dial the plant down but you cannot turn it off.
This is a tiny version of a much broader and much scarier story: if we turn off plants,
the world as we know it will cease to exist.
When designing the plant radio we discussed agencies quite a lot:
Whom do we design for, who has agency, when is agency given,
and how does the Plant Radio transfer or support relation building between all types of actors.
Not adding a power button was a design decision made from the perspective of plants,
however by and for humans.
We are not blind to the irony of this paradox: We might think that we designed with
the plant in mind but the Plant Radio is ultimately designed by and for humans.
Anthroprocentric design decisions will always make it
impossible for plants to escape being seen in a humanistic light.
We see this as a field of tension that must be navigated by the designer.
The point is to not always completely reject the human perspective in favor of the non-human:
This approach could lead to designs that humans can't or won't interact with.
The point is to keep a nuanced and balanced perspective throughout the design process.
The design itself may have been made with elements of human-centered qualities but the reflections
it sets in motion for the human user can shift towards a more post-human outlook on the world.
Summing up: As designers, we hope to have planted an initial seed that makes human
users engage with the idea that plants are sentient beings too.
Worthy of recognition and extended care.